Animals Are Smarter Than We Think

I like animals and they never cease to amaze me. We do not give enough credence to animal intelligence. I also know there are animals which we should never try and get close to, because of their nature. One cannot expect predatory animal such as a tiger, bear, lion or others with this type of nature to make pets or even to be able to be trusted and yet some people do and they even get along with animals of this type. I can’t help but remember a man in an Asian country having a lion for a pet. As the lion got larger he decided he had to have it sent to the zoo. He visits the lion every day and the lion is so happy to see him it throws its paws around the man and hugs him. Clearly this animal loves the man, but this is an exception to the rule. Predators are born to kill prey and when most of the large ones see us they think they are looking at their next meal.

We constantly underestimate the intelligence of animals. Take the crow for example. It has been said the crow is at least as smart as a dog, but in reality it is smarter. Did you know crows mourn their dead? If you are seen with a dead crow the crows remember this so watch out. The crows gather around their dead and mourn them. When an experiment was conducted which had a masked man with a dead crow, the crow which discovered them would call for more crows. The crows would all squawk loudly until they gradually stopped and left after between 10-20 minutes. When crows see a dead crow near a hawk they react the most. Dr. John Marzluff of the University of Washington stated, “Our findings add to the evolving view of large-brained, social and long-lived birds like crows being on a cognitive par with our closest relatives.” When a person wearing a mask trapped a crow, that person in the same mask was remembered for years by the crows as a threat.

Since I am talking about crows, I would like to mention again the fact crows know how to make tools. When scientists discovered this they couldn’t believe their eyes. A tiny thimble with a handle was inserted into a tube in a crow’s cage. The thimble had food in it. The only other thing in the cage was a paperclip. The crow went over to the tube, looked down it and realized it couldn’t reach the food and then went to the paper clip and bent it into a straight wire with a hook at the bottom and used it to lift the thimble out of the tube by inserting the hook into the handle. No one had ever believed any bird would be smart enough to do this. As a matter of fact it was believed that man was the only species capable of making tools. That turned out to be an arrogant thought.

In a recent memory test given to chimps the results were incredible, the chimps performed better than humans. Chimps show a lot of the abilities we have and their genomes are 98 percent identical to ours. They hunt in organized groups, make tools and engage in acts of violence. They have self-awareness and are capable of empathy. One has to remember that chimps are far stronger than humans and are capable of ripping off arms and legs, so they really do not make good pets, even though a few people have them. One of the problems with this we tend to think of their actions in human terms and forget they are still wild animals.

Let’s talk about dolphins. For years I have been hearing about scientists performing experiments to try and find out if dolphins have a language. Their brains are bigger than ours, so they could be smarter, at least in some ways. Some Australian dolphins that forage on the sea floor put a sponge over their snout to protect it while engaging in this activity. All dolphins engage in some sort of communication using clicks and whistles. Many believe this is the dolphin language and that this language has dialects. The problem here is just when you think an animal is very human like it does something repulsive to us. In the case of the dolphins one group of male bottle nosed dolphins hunted down the babies from another group throwing them up into the air to break their necks. The purpose of this action was not clear.

An experiment was conducted where squirrels’ nuts were being stolen by humans. The squirrels didn’t like this very much and began to try and deceive the humans as to where the nuts were buried. Squirrels were able to create a defense against this nut stealing because they could reason. There have been studies which show squirrels create maps of where they buried their nuts and there are squirrels that mask their scent with that of rattlesnakes to hide themselves from predators. I remember seeing a squirrel being stalked by a cat. It was walking across the grass with a cat sneaking behind it. Apparently the squirrel knew the cat was there, because it turned and stood on two legs making itself very big which scared the cat which ran away.

A TV screen was setup and a pig was placed in front of it. The pig was taught some of the objects shown on the screen. After that it was able to distinguish between objects it knew and ones it didn’t. It did this by using its snout and was as good at it as chimps.

When animals do some exceptionally smart things sometimes it is so amazing we can’t believe it. There is an elephant that actually can paint pictures of what it sees. An elephant recognizes its reflection in a mirror, a feat not many animals understand. They are very social and have empathy. There is nothing sadder than watching an elephant cry by the body of a deceased elephant or watching an elephant trying to get one of the sick baby elephants to stand up and walk. Elephants are very good at cooperation and know when it is needed.

We are learning that we have under estimated animal intelligence, because animals are turning out to be far smarter than we have been giving them credit for.